A coroner rebuked the grieving family of a young Conservative activist who committed suicide for describing their son’s former boyfriend as a murderer.
The father of Elliott Johnson, 21, had said this week that his son’s ex-lover, Andre Walker, would not be welcome at a pre-inquest hearing and likened it to “the murderer returning to the scene of the crime”.
Mr Johnson killed himself on railway tracks near Sandy station in Bedfordshire last September. He had previously made a formal complaint to the Conservative party about alleged bullying and intimidation by Mark Clarke, the former Tory election aide who organised campaigning events for young activists.
In one of three suicide notes, Mr Johnson wrote that he had been “bullied by Mark Clarke and betrayed by Andre Walker”.
At the hearing in Ampthill, Bedfordshire, yesterday, which Mr Walker attended, Tom Osborne, the senior coroner, said that he had been shown comments made by a family member.
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“It’s unacceptable,” he said. “Can I reiterate that everyone who has an interest in these matters is entitled to attend. Everyone in my court is entitled to be treated with respect.”
After the hearing, Mr Walker, a political journalist, continued the war of words between the two parties, accusing his ex-lover’s family of “homophobia” and claiming they were trying to cover-up details of their son’s past mental health problems.
A press account of a leaked British Transport Police report has suggested that Mr Johnson made three suicide attempts when he was a teenager.
Mr Walker claimed that a reference in one of the suicide notes to the activist’s concerns that he would not be able to provide his family with grandchildren “was clearly a reference to problems with Elliott’s sexuality within his family”. Mr Johnson’s father has previously dismissed claims that he argued with his son over his homosexuality.
Lawyers for Mr Johnson’s family asked the coroner to expand the scope of the inquest and examine whether there was a bullying culture within the Conservative party.
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Heather Williams, QC, said that the activist’s parents believed his death was “directly linked” to alleged bullying by Mr Clarke in the weeks before his death, which may have amounted to “inhuman and degrading treatment”. She claimed that there had been a “systemic” culture of intimidation within the party.
Making the case for a wider remit, Ms Williams said that Mr Johnson had been at a “really exciting time in his life” until a few weeks before his death when he suffered a “terrible chain of events”.
“He was making friends and winning influence in the political circles he aspired to be part of,” Ms Williams said.
In August last year he was involved in an altercation with Mr Clarke in a Westminster pub, which prompted him to make a formal bullying complaint. At around the same time he lost his job at the right-wing pressure group Conservative Way Forward (CWF).
A lawyer for CWF, who was at the hearing, said that the decision to make Mr Johnson redundant was not linked to his run-in with Mr Clarke and had been made earlier.
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Ms Williams said that Mr Johnson’s death threw up wider questions about an alleged culture of intimidation within the party and that the coroner had a duty to prevent future deaths.
“Profound questions arise as to why these events were able to occur, what systems could have been in place to prevent it and risks for others in equivalent positions,” she said.
A ruling on the application to widen the scope of the inquiry is expected in the next couple of days. Mr Clarke has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.